Mac vs. PC: How Would Linux Fit?

Apple’s “Get a Mac” Campaign
Always a branding powerhouse, Apple is a company whose television advertisements are usually excellent. Their recent Get a Mac campaign (”Hi, I’m a Mac / And I’m a PC”) certainly does not disappoint. At this point, the television commercial are very well known.

The campaign exemplifies the artfully clever use of “framing,” the selective control of information used to shape a viewer’s perception. A simple example is the term “tax relief.” If you have an anti-taxation agenda, “tax relief” is a much more powerful term than “tax cut” because it frames taxes as a burden from which people need relief. The term assumes its own premise and thereby frames our perception.

In the “Get a Mac” campaign, Apple frames an artificial dualism, and then re-enforces the dualism with powerful metaphors. The dualism frames two options: either you use a PC (understood to mean Windows) or a Mac. Those are your options. (more…)

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4 Comments

The average user still uses Windows OS. Only the “technically inclined” and bold end-users are adopter to Linux at home. The ads are meant to convey that ease of use and reliability are key attributes that the user community seek. In Apples case they have worked to maintain that criteria since the inception of OSX.

The Linux mantra has typically been to prove that it can replace the windows environment with a more reliable platform. It has been late in introducing a platform that truly can be adopted by the average Joe. Momentum is building on acceptance.

In Apple’s case they have maintain tight controls on Software AND hardware to ensure compatibility and reliability. All the while it has been able to thrive within it’s own creative freedoms. This simple formula has been key to Apple’s success and I suspect will continue to be the case for years to come, provided they keep the Unix foundation.

Windows has the installed base, it has the marketing droans, and sadly it has the CIO’s who can’t be bothered to think about what they are doing, or do they?

Apple on the other hand has its expanding ( if slowly ) installed base, with individuals who can think.

What does Linux have? It has a large number of distrobutions that offer different levels of compatibility and diffrernt levels of reliability. The options are numerous. So numerous in fact that no CIO wants to go there. Even with SUSE things change far to rapidly.

M$ and Apple both have a very clean method of sending out updates, they send all dependencies with them. With Linux you never really know if an update is going to break something you installed and the dependency resolution is problematic.

Nothing in Linux marches in Lock-Step because a lot of the major parts of it ( KDE, GNome and more ) come from different groups that dont nessessarily communicate with each other. So applying a patch to fix one thing could very well break something else.

This is not to say the MS and Apple don’t have their own issues with updating, but they are fewer, in my estimation.

Linux’s greatest strength is unfortunately is greates weakness. If you find a glitch and report it to the appropriate dev group it will more then likely be fixed within a week or so and the update will be posted, but has that update been tested against all possible configurations? More then likely not.

Novell’s opportunity to get SUSE really buttoned down and flying is getting narrower npw that Vista has hit the streets. No CIO in his right mind will do Vista until Sp1, but Sp1 is in the pipline and on its way. (Un)fortunately, as you see it, the Level of complexity involved making a ton of legacy stuff run under Vista is quite difficult so that will delay things for a bit.

Novell needs to continue its razor sharp focus on making SUSE install smoother then it is now. It needs to focus harder on the service pack front.

SUSE has only one attack targer and that is windows. It doesn;t stand a chance against a MAC w/OS-X simply because as others have stated Apple controls both the hardware and software very closely.

Novell cannot constrol the hardware, but they can control the software. The “it works with {Device, Mother Board, Mouse, Video Card…]” has to be more explicit. On install it has to be very upfront when it detects a device it will either not function with, or function less then optimaly,

Talls orders, yes, but those and others have to be followed in order to really make a dent.

[…] This is one of three videos from Novell that they came out with at the recent Brainshare conference. Playing on the popular Mac vs. PC media campaign launched by Apple, this video has just the right amount of wit for it to remain sticky in your mind. […]